


This is Not About a Tree

by lesbianpatrick



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Dark, Depressing, Drabble, I don't know why I wrote this, Immortality, M/M, One-Shot, Suicide Attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:26:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6689095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianpatrick/pseuds/lesbianpatrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a derelict town in a derelict county of a derelict state in a derelict country pretending to be otherwise, there is a tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Not About a Tree

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I wrote this. It's a weird one-shot thing and it's a little depressing so? Don't read if you don't like that.
> 
> I don't even know why. I just wrote it.

In a derelict town in a derelict county of a derelict state in a derelict country pretending to be otherwise, there is a tree. 

This tree has witnessed many things. It is a very old tree. It knows more than it lets the humans think it does. It has seen life begin and end. It has seen flowers bloom and die, and people be born and fall to their death. 

It has seen people running from something, and people running to something. It has seen people who never make it either way. 

This story is not about that tree. 

But that tree has witnessed the beginning of this story. 

—•—•—•—

The year is 1947. 

Pete is 20, and he ends his life. 

He decides it isn't worth it anyway. One warm summer night he throws himself off a cliff and falls to the ground seventy feet below. 

He can't understand why he wakes up unscathed at the cliff's bottom. 

Thinking maybe he imagined it all, he climbs back up and throws himself off again. But yet again, he wakes up unharmed where he'd fallen to his apparently not-so-inevitable doom. 

Throughout the night, he stabs himself multiple times, eats poisonous foxglove flowers, drowns in a pond, sets himself on fire. 

He wakes up unscathed. 

Through this all, the tree watches. It likes this peculiar human. 

This is when Pete reaches the conclusion that he cannot die. 

It alarms him at first, for a few years. He stays on the run, and from that day on he never seems to age. His eyes stay young and bright, his skin stays smooth and olive-tan, his hair never grays or falls out. 

He's given up on death, because death has given up on him. 

There's no light at the end of the tunnel. 

There's simply no end of the tunnel. 

In fact, maybe there never was a tunnel at all.

—•—•—•—

The year is now 2016. 

It's been nearly seventy years since Pete tried to catch death. Death still won't let itself be caught. 

Pete still looks 20. 

He's 89. 

He wanders the streets every day, greeting the homeless and those with homes alike, because in his mind they're all the same; they'll all die. 

He won't. 

Pete has tried to be with people, but it doesn't work out so well when he never moves on, but the ones he loves do. 

He gives up on attachment altogether. 

Which is why he doesn't even think about how cute the guy with a fedora who stops him in the middle of the sidewalk and says, "You should be dead." is. He doesn't. 

"Hm." He says in response. Yes, he should be dead. That's true. But he isn't. What's this random guy off the street going to do about it?

"You should be dead, but you aren't." The guy elaborates. 

"Interesting. How'd you come to that conclusion?" Pete asks, humored by this person who somehow knows about his little game of hide and seek with death. 

The guy frowns, eyes weighed with knowledge that maybe he shouldn't have. "I think I had a vision. And you should be dead."

"Hm." Pete nods. "Yeah, probably."

The guy looks angry. "Last night in my dreams I saw someone die. But he didn't. He jumped off a cliff. He stabbed himself. He poisoned himself, he drowned, he _burned_. He didn't die, though. He never died. And it was you."

"Well, I sure did all those things." Pete comments, nodding. He really doesn't have time for this. But then, he does. He always has time. Too much of it. 

"You should be dead." The guy repeats again. 

Suddenly there's a knife through Pete's chest. That's okay, he'll be fine. Then the guy wrenches it out and stabs himself, too. 

" _We should both be dead_." He says, gripping Pete's hand as they both fall weakly to the ground.

Pete nods. He's not in a position to argue with that.

The clock strikes midnight. The sun finally rises. A locked door opens. 

Pete catches death. 

So does the man who helped him do it. 

Pete is thankful. He nearly cries in his last moments, because he can tell. It's over. 

In the old derelict town, two new saplings begin to grow by the old tree. The tree is pleased. It is no longer alone on the derelict town's derelict cliffside. 

And maybe, just maybe, this story really is about the tree. 

Or it's about Pete. 

The cliff. 

Death. 

Or life. 

This story is about everything and nothing. This story is about death bringing new life. This story is about strange circumstances finally bringing people home. 

So, yes. 

This is a story about the tree.


End file.
